GRGR(6): End of the Advent service

[rj]

Clinching it somewhat, I think:

> -- here's Jessica in her sister's hand-me-down pyjamas, and Roger 
> asleep in nothing at all, but where *is* the war?
>    Until it touch them. Until something falls. A doodle will give 
> time to get to safety, a rocket will hit before they can hear it 
> coming. Biblical, maybe, spooky as an old northern fairy tale, but 
> not The War, not the great struggle of good and evil the wireless 
> reports every day. And no reason not just to, well, to keep on . . .
>    Roger has tried to explain to her the V-bomb statistics: the 
> difference between distributions, in angel's-eye view, over the map 
> of England, and their own chances, as seen from down here. She's 
> almost got it, nearly understands his Poisson equation, yet can't 
> quite put the two together -- put her own enforced calm day-to-day 
> alongside the pure numbers, and keep them both in sight. Pieces keep 
> slipping in and out.
>    "Why is your equation only for angels, Roger? Why can't *we* do something, down here? Couldn't there be an equation for us too, something to help us find a safer place?" (54.15-30)

Btw, do we ever find out what Jessica's war job is? Where she works?

best

> 
> Another thought. Is the female sensibility of so much of the sequence
> (the Wrens at work; children and domesticity -- "offal in gland pies,
> Household Milk, broken biscuits", the "bed-going complaints" and
> teeth-cleaning rituals; the mildewed wedding dresses; mothers and babies
> back from the Evacuation "for the holidays" despite Mr Morrison's
> gravity and warnings; grandparents listening to the Radio Doctor; NAAFI
> girls at the Stage Door Canteen; the vapid soprano; Liberty's wispy
> gown) down to Jessica -- a continuance of her almost forlorn meditation
> of "What about the girls?" It would explain the stream-of-consciousness
> style, floating from one image or intuition to the next so
> idiosyncratically. And if it is Jess, are we being sucked in by *her*
> barely-suppressed hysteria and sentimentality here (say, at 131.25, or
> 135.1-7, or the last paragraph) ... ?
>